Echoes of Silence
by Rottweiler7692
Summary: One day can change an entire nation’s view of the world. What are the consequences for one young man? Joe Hardy was a young boy when it first happened but he was 17 when his girlfriend was taken away from him by similar means.


**Then**

_It was chaos. The tumult wasn't only in Joe's head, he was sure. What Joe remembered feeling the most was confused anxiety, brought on by the emotions of the rest of the people. Especially his mom. As soon as she had gotten the call around nine in the morning, she had turned the TV on. _

_Joe was too preoccupied with trying to figure out what was going on to enjoy the fact that he didn't have to go to school. School was okay, but school without Frank was no fun because Frank was away at a camp for the night. _

_Soon after Laura had gotten the first call, her friend from down the street arrived sobbing at their door. Laura had ushered her son upstairs with a haunted look on her face. Her eyes were worried; the wrinkles creasing her forehead making her look much too old for her young age._

_Joe went up the stairs obediently even though he wanted to know what was going on. What had happened? He lay on his stomach at the top of the stairwell and pressed his face against the cool bars. Deb, his mother's friend sat sobbing on the couch. His mother brought her a mug of tea but she didn't touch it. _

_Deb was going on and on about some kind of call. Joe guessed it was a phone call. Somebody had called her to say goodbye. He didn't see what was such a big deal about it or why it mattered so much. It was just a phone call. But as the hysterical woman continued to explain through tears and hitched breaths, Joe finally began piecing together the phrases. "Goodbye… on the plane… called me… goodbye… he loves me… plane…" But wasn't it good that his mommy's friend's friend had called her and told her goodbye and that he loved her before he left? What was so bad about that?_

_At that moment, the doorbell rang again and more of Laura's friends entered. One woman put her arms around Deb. Men began arriving too; the women's husbands. The grown- ups sat together around the TV, not speaking much. There were a couple of babies and very young children that the women distractedly rocked when they started crying._

_Presently, Joe found himself being gently shaken awake by his mother. He clung to her, frightened by the color of the sky that he could see through the windows. It was a dark, scary color. The color of monsters, like the ones Joe knew were in the house at night when Frank and his parents weren't there. The atmosphere in the house itself was cold and muted. The guests in the living room spoke in hushed tones. Joe wished Frank was here. He would explain what was happening._

"_Mommy?" he asked hesitantly. "What's going on?" _

"_Oh baby," Laura pulled her son tightly into herself, burying her face into the little boy. "Everything is going to be okay," she reassured, not knowing who the words were really directed to. But Joe would keep her sane. She finally pulled Joe away from her and he tensed in surprise at his mother's red eyes and puffy cheeks._

"_Are Frank and Daddy okay?" Joe asked hesitantly. The last time he'd asked if someone had died, his mother had burst into tears and he didn't want that to happen again._

_Laura sniffed and cleared her throat. "Frank's fine, I talked to his teacher. They're going to be home as soon as they can. Your daddy… your daddy is okay. He's fine," she repeated, her voice breaking and looking on the verge of tears again. Joe gaped at her, his eyes wide in fear. "I'm sorry baby," she apologized to her son, drawing him to her for another embrace and kiss. "Everything is going to be fine. He's going to be home soon."_

"_What happened?" was Joe's next question, his eyes still wide as he studied his mother's face. Seemingly unbeknownst to her, a tear was sliding down her face._

_Laura stared at him. His face was filled with anxious fear that she was causing. Forcing herself to calm down, she swiped her tears away and tried to think of a way to explain. "Some planes knocked down some buildings," she settled on saying after a hesitation._

_Joe's face was colored with confusion so she tried to explain further. "Remember those big buildings that we saw when we went to New York City?" she asked. _

_Joe nodded. Those he remembered. They were sooo tall. He remembered Frank explaining how many "stories" the building had. He'd been confused at that. A building wasn't a book, how could it have stories? Frank had patiently explained about different levels being called stories._

"_Some planes crashed into those buildings," Laura continued and Joe forced himself to focus on his mother's explanation. _

"_Oh," Joe said, still not really understanding._

"_C'mon honey," Laura bent down and swung Joe up into her arms. She was unable to keep still and kept moving around in agitation. Joe gratefully locked his own arms around his mother, fervently wishing Frank was here. He buried his face into his mother's neck when they got downstairs. The group was still sitting absolutely still and watching the news on TV. Joe peeked around his mother at the TV too, curious and unable to look away. _

_At that moment, the image of the serious news reporters changed to a video of a fire. The camera zoomed out and Joe could make out a building that looked awfully familiar. But the thing that caught his attention the most was when the camera moved down to the ground. There was a flash of color. Something was falling from the sky. The shapes resembled dolls or something. Then the sound of screams and chaos. Lots of people scrambling around. Agony. Panic._

_The living room was still. Picking up on the terror on the TV and the horror of the people in the room, Joe felt his stomach do flip-flops. He couldn't bear it, he just couldn't. He'd always been unable to take the overwhelming emotions of others, being particularly receptive to people's feelings. _

_Frank was the one who understood. Whenever he was feeling like this, Frank was always there, wrapping an arm around him and pulling Joe against Frank's own beating heart. The steady thump-thump of his brother's heart would calm Joe down and slow his own heart rate. But Frank wasn't here to protect him from whatever had happened. Could anyone? All the grownups looked so scared and sad. They weren't supposed to look like that!_

_Not aware of Joe's apprehension, Laura set him down onto a nearby empty chair facing the TV with a good vantage point of the other people. She moved back to the telephone as if it was magnetically drawing her. She seemed to be unaware of doing it. _

"_Laura, sit down," someone told her gently. "He's probably fine."_

_Laura looked up at the person, about to reply but then the flashing images on the TV caught her eye again. "I can't," she gasped out, tears springing to her eyes again. "He was supposed to be going there," she pointed at the TV. "What if? What if?" Now Laura collapsed onto another chair and the other women came over to her._

_Laura pushed away from the group of well-wishers. She now only had eyes for her son, her baby. Joe instinctively leaned toward his mother as she scooped him into her arms. Mercifully, she was now blocking Joe's view of the worried glances of the other people in the room. But now the problem was that the only thing he had a clear view of was the television. _

_The planes, rubble, soot coated helpless people, and the somber people on the TV. Joe couldn't tear his eyes away from the scene even as he felt his stomach dropping and doing all sorts of weird things._

_The wails of emergency vehicles, the phone ringing, and people mumbling could be heard in the background._

_At each video, Joe was feeling worse and worse and he felt himself quivering. His mother couldn't tell because of her own trembling against him. _

_Joe had figured out the secret. He'd fitted the pieces together; the news, the other people, his mother's teary demeanor. He knew what his mother was trying to hide but not doing a very good job of. _

_He knew that his daddy might not come back home safely that night like he always did. His daddy might not be sitting at the kitchen table with his coffee and the newspaper the next morning._

_--_

**Now**

Seventeen-year-old Joe Hardy stood above Iola Morton's headstone. "Iola," he found himself whispering. He cleared his throat. Terrorists used to leave everyone whispering but he wasn't going to whisper. No, he was going to be as loud and angry as he wished and hunt them down, like everyone else was too scared to do.

Maybe Iola's life wasn't celebrated throughout the world or held in prayer every year by the country. Maybe her life wasn't commemorated in any grand way; maybe her memorial wasn't called anything that was so familiar, so recognizable, the name striking fear and anger into many hearts. But Iola was still an innocent. She still had been loved as much as any victim. No, still _was _loved.

So many innocent people… so many pure lives… taken away. Just like that. A blink of the eye, a heartbeat, and everything was over, the images seared into the survivors' brains. Nothing you would ever forget, no matter how small of a role you played on that fateful day.

"Now I understand, Iola," Joe murmured. "I didn't understand what was going on on September 11 'cause I was too little, but I understand now. I _will_ find them. I _will_ find them and somehow give them a taste of their own medicine. They never had to go through it. They deserve a fate worse than death for what they did. How could they do it? How could they be so heartless?" Joe's voice got louder and more heated as he spoke. The questions hung in the cold air about the grave, unanswered.

Joe stood uncharacteristically still, his face hard and tough for a long moment. Then he looked up at the single flag planted in the mound of dirt beside the grave. It was fluttering elegantly in the slight wind. The image of hundreds of thousands of waving flashes of colors came back to Joe. He stared into Iola's lone flag until the colors started blurring together and he realized his eyes were damp.

Red, white, and blue. What did it mean? Was it something that he could wave about as justification as he went on his quest for retribution? Was it a symbol that meant more than anybody could put to words?

Or was it just a meaningless excuse for hate and murder?

**Please tell me what you think!!**


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